


Nights Like These

by sgtfarron



Series: Nights [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Introspection, Very somber, Written mostly for myself, neurodivergent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 20:24:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5104592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sgtfarron/pseuds/sgtfarron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because you can't act on something you don't feel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nights Like These

**Author's Note:**

> A musing character study of sorts on Shaw, on trying to resolve and bring to terms not having a normal range of emotion and yet having someone in their life that seems to matter to them.
> 
> You can always find me at sgt-farron.tumblr.com

You don’t understand how this has happened. How you’ve ended up here, in this bed, with her after everything you’ve been through. You think back on everything that has happened until now and find that at its core it’s a series of not saying no enough, firmly enough; of just letting things happen. A story of narcissism and self-indulgence.

Selfish.

If you had feelings you’d probably feel bad; guilty. Instead you are left mulling over how you _know_ , in your head, that this isn’t fair for her.

You like what she gives you, the mind-blowing orgasms aside. She indulges your idiosyncrasies without complaint, but all you can seemingly do is not hate her for hers.

She seems to insist she knows what she’s getting into; falling in love with a sociopath. You’re not entirely convinced.

Normally you don’t let yourself think this much, but today had been a bad day for the both of you.

It started when Root had been stuck with a needle during the course of working the number and you had to try and talk her down from a full blown panic attack. It didn’t help that she had tried to suppress the emotions rather than work through them (you know that had been for your sake, but it just exacerbated the problem).

Your reaction to seeing her stuck with the needle? The insides of your elbows itched for the better part of an hour and you had a few short recollections of your time in Samaritan’s hold. Oh, and you had been a bit short with everyone the rest of the day, a little less likely to tolerate their inane chatter (to a degree more than usual).

But you were fine. She wasn’t.

Therein lays the problem.

The difference between you highlighted and seeming larger with every time your mind rolls over the thought.

The worst nine months of your life – nine months filled with nearly endless physical (and attempts at) psychological torture – and you are mostly fine. Sure, when you were first rescued you were probably what most people would describe as ‘bitter’, filled with a righteous anger that continued to simmer constantly under the surface that didn’t dampen until Samaritan was burned to the ground. But now that that is the past, it is not prologue. You are (mostly) fine.

Root has one experience a handful of years ago and it still comes back to haunt her. She is not fine. (You don’t blame her or anything; or think she’s weak, because you know that’s _normal_ ).

You were awoken a few hours ago to her in the midst of some nightmare. You stared at her for a few moments before edging her over from her side of the bed so that her head was resting on your chest before she managed to wake herself up completely. If she woke up she would leave the bed and sit on the couch for the rest of the night, not sleeping. From experience this is the only way to ensure that she will sleep through the night, even if it means you won’t.

You can’t sleep with someone pressed against you like this.

Most nights Root needs her space too so it works out, but her nightmares are only soothed by physical comfort.

So you hold her.

And in the morning she will wake with something like guilt in her eyes because she’ll know you haven’t slept because of her. She will start to apologies quietly and you’ll silence her with a quick kiss. You will still see traces of those feelings filling up her eyes as she leaves the bed then and you’ll be left wondering what the hell she sees when she looks into yours.

It’s a sign that you care. In your own way.

(You suppose.)

That you are so willing to give up your sleep for her like that. To prefer your discomfort that you know is coming over hers.

But it’s not enough, you know.

Maybe Gen had been right, back then. Maybe there is something underneath the static. Something that lets you let Root be around. To have a stake in her wellbeing and vice versa.

But it will never be fair to her that you don’t feel compelled to care. 

That instead you wake up every day and _choose_ to care (in your own way). To know that on any given day you could take her or leave her and that that isn’t how this is supposed to work (because you are fairly certain Root feels like she never had a choice, that once she was in she was in, and there is a hell of a lot of dead bodies and scorched earth that paint those feelings loud and clear).

And it will never be enough that you do not actively care, but instead only reactively care. To care only once someone or something has treaded on some unknown space between you and set off a protective instinct you have developed toward her.

Because you can’t act on something you don’t feel.

If you had feelings you’d probably feel bad; guilty. Instead you are left mulling over how you know, in your head, that this isn’t fair for her.

On nights like this you wish you could just sleep with a warm body pressed against yours.

**Author's Note:**

> As someone with a pd that includes a blunted emotional capacity, Shaw has always been someone for whom I've been drawn to. I guess this is mostly a fic for myself and trying to make sense of two contradictory things (that strange phenomenon of genuinely not "feeling" anything on a surface level but in some way caring nonetheless).


End file.
